Once Britain’s foremost natural history artist, when he realised his eyesight was failing he turned to painting landscapes on his travels.
Hunt
Like eyes and the rest of the face, hands are most usually seen uncovered in figurative paintings. These paintings show gloved hands which have special purposes and meaning.
Why did Bosch show people wearing funnels on their heads? Why the Roundheads? How to tell priestly rank by the hat, and more about chaperons and top hats.
He specialised in ‘light genre’ paintings, not-to-serious domestic scenes, painted in fine detail, and was praised by Ruskin.
Great Pre-Raphaelite women didn’t stand behind their partners, but in front of them, as their muses and models. Masterpieces with two stories to tell.
Skyscrapers and human landscapes in New York City, tennis in Rhode Island, and Mardi Gras on Coney Island – and more.
Sleeping figures painted by Rubens, Poussin, Velázquez, William Blake, Richard Dadd and other masters.
Why did the Pre-Raphaelites want to return to the ‘purity’ of painting before Raphael? Did they succeed?
Independent and aloof, cats train their humans and think that they’re still large and ferocious. Paintings from Carpaccio to Bonnard.
New genres in literature gave the public a taste for different forms of narrative. Here’s a short account of the response in ‘problem pictures’ from Hunt to Collier.
The Eclectic Light Company 